at Mrs. Windsor's cottage that evening
in an amazing condition of shiny rosiness, with round cheeks that seemed
to focus the dying rays of the setting sun, and hair brushed perfectly
flat to their little bullet-shaped heads, in which the brains worked
with much excitement and anticipation. Their eyes were mostly blue and
innocent, and they were all afflicted with a sort of springy shyness
which led them at one moment to jumps of joy, and at another to blushes
and smiling speechlessness. They were altogether naive and invigorating,
and even Madame Valtesi, peering at them through her tortoise shell
eyeglass, was moved to a dry approbation. She nodded her head at them
two or three times, and remarked--

"Boys are much nicer than girls. They giggle less, and smile more. In
surplices these would be quite fetching--quite."

Mrs. Windsor, too, was quite desolated by the fact that they had not
come in what she persisted in calling their little nightgowns. She
expressed her sorrow to the head boy, who occasionally sang "Oh! for the
wings of a dove!" as a solo at even-song, and was consequently looked up
to with deep respect by all the village.

"I thought you always wore them when you sang!" she said plaintively.
"It makes it so much more impressive. Couldn't you send for them?"

The head boy, who was just twelve, blushed violently, and said he was
afraid Mr. Smith would be angry. They were kept for the church. Mr.
Smith was very particular, he added.

"How absurd the clergy are!" murmured Mrs. Windsor aside to Esme
Amarinth. "Making such a fuss about a few nightgowns. But perhaps they
are blessed, or consecrated, or something, and that makes them
different. Well, it can't be helped, but I did think they would look so
pretty standing in the moonlight after supper and singing catches in
them--like the angels, you know."

"Do the angels sing catches after supper?" Madame Valtesi asked of Lady
Locke, who was trying to restrain the pardonable excitement of Tommy. "I
am so ignorant about these things."

Lady Locke did not hear. She was watching the rather fussy movements of
Lord Reggie, who was darting about, sorting out the copies of his anthem
which the village organist had laboriously written out that day. His
face was pale, and his eyes shone with eagerness.

"After all," Lady Locke thought, "he is very young, and has a good deal
of freshness left in him. To-night, even among these boys, he looks like
a boy."

The cho